UPST CEO Hammered by Cramer

Background: Cramer had been a fan of Upstart for some time. CEO Girouad was on Mad Money this afternoon for walk to the woodshed exercise. I give Girouad credit for taking the licks. Here is a snippet of the exchange:

Cramer immediately called into question Upstart’s business model, which was supposed to be a fintech loan platform. As it turns out, Upstart has loans on its books and is seeing a high high 2.9% default rate on those loans.

Girouard defended his company by saying that the fundamentals haven’t changed and Upstart has delivered seven consecutive quarters of growth and profits. He explained that 90% of the loans originated on their platform are bought by banks and Upstart only holds loans to test new products.

https://www.thestreet.com/jim-cramer/mad-money-recap-may-10-…

Cramer said a 2.9% delinquency on book loans was extremely high and Girouad was completely wrong defending the profit margins per Cramer’s 40 years of investing in financials. At the end Cramer raised his voice and told Girouad to get rid of the high delinquency loans on the book and the stock will recover. What, he can’t sell them? Girouad thanked Cramer for being on the show. Phewwwww!

My understanding is that most of the loans that UPST holds are auto loans. Does anybody have any knowledge of the amount of unsecured personal loans held on their books? What is their delinquency rate? What is the financial exposure to UPST? I never considered the auto loans a high risk given the collateral and this is temporal holding by UPST to verify its auto models.

-zane

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